The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change notified the Forest (Conservation) Rules, 2022 on June 27.
Salient provision
- It has proposed the constitution of an Advisory Committee, a regional empowered committee at each of the integrated regional offices and a screening committee at the state/Union Territory (UT) government-level.
- The five-member screening committee will meet at least twice every month and will advise the state governments on projects in a time bound manner, the rules state.
- According to the notification, the screening committee committee will examine every proposal received from state governments or administrations of Union Territories (UTs) without going into the merit of the proposal.
- The new rules also prescribe the time frame of review for different kinds of projects. All non-mining projects between 5-40 hectares must be reviews within a period of 60 days and all such mining projects within 75 days.
- For projects involving a larger area, the committee gets some more time — 120 days for non-mining projects involving more than 100 hectares and 150 days for mining projects.
- The other significant change introduced in the new rules is that all linear projects (roads, highways, etc), projects involving forest land up to 40 hectares and those that have projected a use of forest land having a canopy density up to 0.7 — irrespective of their extent for the purpose of survey — shall be examined in the Integrated Regional Office.
- The notification also shifts the onus of ensuring forest rights of forest dwellers are rehabilitated to state governments.
- So far, compliance with the forest rights act was mandatory before the Centre granted stage II forest clearance to any project, however, that has also changed.
- According to the new rules, those applying for diverting forest land in a hilly or mountainous state with green cover over two-thirds it’s geographical area or in a state/UT with forest cover of over one-third the geographical area will be able to take up compensatory afforestation in other states/UTs where the cover is less than 20%.
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